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Why is inclusion or lack of U.2 ports a consideration on motherboard scoring at all? There's all of ONE SSD in the consumer market that uses u.2 natively - the intel 750 series ( I think, searching for u.2 SSDs brings me nowwhere.)

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Why is inclusion or lack of U.2 ports a consideration on motherboard scoring at all? There's all of ONE SSD in the consumer market that uses u.2 natively - the intel 750 series ( I think, searching for u.2 SSDs brings me nowhere.)

If anything, I'd say u.2 inclusion is a negative, as it just adds additional cost to a component of the motherboard that no one is every going to use going forward.

There's m.2 and there's SATA, and that's it for consumers. u.2 died. flipped, flopped, and then burned.

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Why is inclusion or lack of U.2 ports a consideration on motherboard scoring at all? There's all of ONE SSD in the consumer market that uses u.2 natively - the intel 750 series ( I think, searching for u.2 SSDs brings me nowhere.)

If anything, I'd say u.2 inclusion is a negative, as it just adds additional cost to a component of the motherboard that no one is every going to use going forward.

There's m.2 and there's SATA, and that's it for consumers. u.2 died. flipped, flopped, and then burned.

If you want >2TB NVME SSD your only option is U.2 2.5 inch SSD. and you are mistaken about only one available , Almost all companies offer U.2 NVME SSDs not only Intel.

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Besides Intel, could you please link an actual for-sale SSD product that has a u.2 interface - and not just a seperate m.2 to u.2 or sata to u.2 adapter or something. I just checked a whole ton of websites, newegg, amazon, crucial, wd, samsung, etc...

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Besides Intel, could you please link an actual for-sale SSD product that has a u.2 interface - and not just a seperate m.2 to u.2 or sata to u.2 adapter or something. I just checked a whole ton of websites, newegg, amazon, crucial, wd, samsung, etc...

They aren't consumer drives. Were as this article is all about consumer level motherboards.

I stand by my point that u.2 on consumer level hardware is pointless and shouldn't be scored against for not having.

depends on your budget buddy ... depends on your budget. U.2 are not meant for cheap drives , and you can use even cheaper motherboards with U.2 as well. no one said the Z series motherboards are consumer level only , you can build a $6000 PC using Z motherboards , actually B chipsets can also have U.2 ports .

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Just think of U.2 as having onboard SCSI on a board from, well, a long time ago. On the positive side you don't have to buy an adapter to use an enterprise-class SSD. On the negative side those lanes could have been used for a M.2 slot.

Intel will release more U.2 form factor drives but the ecosystem hasn't caught on in the client market. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why. Cables stink and the NAND shortage destroyed any hope of using the additional space to increase low-cost flash capacity.

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Just think of U.2 as having onboard SCSI on a board from, well, a long time ago. On the positive side you don't have to buy an adapter to use an enterprise-class SSD. On the negative side those lanes could have been used for a M.2 slot.

Intel will release more U.2 form factor drives but the ecosystem hasn't caught on in the client market. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why. Cables stink and the NAND shortage destroyed any hope of using the additional space to increase low-cost flash capacity.

If at first your don't succeed...

Actually I prefer U.2 drives over M2 , and I wish SSD manufacturers make a U.2 version of every NVME SSD they make , for one reason : heat ... NVME drives throttle on M2 slots and get hot.

The Other reason I prefer U.2 is the hot swap capability of 2.5 SSD which is impossible to do with M2

and Finally , if you populate the solts the M2 drive will be below it and you will have to remove the cards to access the M2 SSD .

2.5 inch NVME SSD are 10 times better than M2 NVME SSD , for both performance and ease to swap/access